Networking megafirm Cisco has released a numbingly comprehensive report forecasting IP traffic up to and including 2018, which comes to the unsurprising conclusion that the market from which Cisco earns its bread and butter will continue to balloon for the foreseeable future.
The Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) contains a …

WWDC
Apple CEO Tim Cook took a few minutes of his two-hour keynote at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on Monday morning in San Francisco to stick his thumb in Android's eye.
"Over 130 million customers who bought an iOS device in the past 12 months were buying their first Apple device," Cook told the 6,000 developers …

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich has announced Chipzilla's lastest move in his effort to "take pragmatic and different approaches" to tackling the low-end of the tablet market: partnering with Chinese fabless semiconductor company and mobile SoC maker Rockchip to design an Atom-based, Intel-branded platform that will be targeted …

Solid
Launching a hardware startup is more difficult than springing software upon the world – all a coder needs, after all, is a keyboard and a creative mind – but recent developments are removing barriers and creating a new startup gold rush.
"It used to be really difficult to start a hardware company," Renee DiResta, a Principal at …

Solid
3D printing may be all the rage these days, but the headman at one of the world's leading 3D design, engineering, and entertainment software and services companies thinks its promise has been overblown.
"Much of what's been said of the benefits of 3D printing has been way overhyped," Autodesk president and CEO Carl Bass said at …

Despite not introducing any significant new products during the second quarter of its fiscal 2014 ended in March, Apple has announced unexpectedly healthy revenues and profits for the quarter, with the all-important earnings per share numbers crushing analysts' expectations.
Apple historical revenue and profit chart Apple's …

AMD's stock rose by as much as 13 per cent on Monday morning when the Wall Street moneymen returned to work after their Good Friday holiday and rewarded the microprocessor and graphics design firm for its upbeat financial report for the first quarter of 2014.
AMD's Monday, April 21 stock price rise We can hear the champagne …

Intel has posted its financial results for its first quarter of fiscal 2014 that were either marginally lower or higher than analysts' estimates, depending upon which analysts you trust.
Chipzilla reported revenues of $12.8bn for the quarter, with net income of $1.9bn and the all-important earnings per share (EPS) coming in at $ …

Three recent reports point to a glowing future for smartphones, tablets, and that nascent and still somewhat ill-defined category known as "wearables."
There has been talk recently among some of the chattering classes that smartphone growth may be stalling, but the analysts at Strategy Analytics see things differently. "The …

Apple has three times as much cash on hand as The US government, and over twice as much as the UK.
These figures come to us from the Bank of America's wealth-management arm, US Trust, as reported by London's Telegraph.
In its most recent quarterly SEC filing, Apple reported that it had $158.8bn (£94.9bn) in cash and cash …

The global smartphone market continues to skyrocket, and Apple and its iPhone line continue to slurp up the lion's share of that market's profits despite holding a relatively small marketshare when compared to arch-competitor Samsung.
Percentage of operating profit from mobile phones (globally, select vendors) Apple pulls in an …

Peak Microsoft
According to two different web-analytics groups – NetMarketShare and StatCounter – Windows' market share has dropped to below 90 per cent for the first time since the mid 1990s and the juggernaut that was Windows 95.
As SeekingAlpha reports, NetMarketShare calculates that Windows' market share – that's all versions of Windows …

Some observers have said that the high-profit party is over for Apple's iPhone now that the global smartphone market is becoming saturated, but the market researchers at IDC would beg to disagree.
IDC projections of smartphone average selling prices through 2018 – graph There are low-cost Android phones and expensive ones – but …

London's Metropolitan Police are about to be equipped with a new crime-fighting tool: Apple's iPad mini.
"We want the officers out there fighting crime on the streets rather than sitting in a police station tapping on a keyboard, not solving anything," the force's head flack Richard Thwaite told the Financial Times (registration …

The PC business may be imploding and large chunks of the global economy may still be struggling, but you wouldn't know it from last year's worldwide semiconductor sales – they topped $300bn for the first time in history, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA).
For the full year, the industry raked in $305.6bn …

Analysis
Apple cranked out its best quarter of iPhone and iPad sales to date, thanks to a strong 2013 holiday shopping period, but its projections for the opening three months of 2014 have investors nervous.
As might be guessed, however, CEO Tim Cook says there's nothing to worry about, and that there are new products coming later this …

After Apple announced its new iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina display last October, CEO Tim Cook offered the hopeful opinion that "it's going to be an iPad Christmas."
Turns out his hopes were fulfilled. Apple has announced its financial results for the first quarter of its fiscal 2014 – which happens to coincide with the …

AMD's provision of processors for Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4 consoles appear to have worked its magic on the chip maker's bottom line.
The company's revenue for its fourth quarter of 2013 came in just above analysts' estimates, and significantly above its earnings for the same quarter in its previous fiscal …

Updated
Intel plans to cut its workforce by approximately 5,400 employees this year, a company spokesman told The Reg.
After the workforce reduction was revealed by Reuters, Intel senior manager of corporate and financial PR Chris Kraeuter confirmed to us that there will be a reduction of "about 5 per cent" of the company's 107,600 …

Apple's flagship iPhone 5s has been the world's top-selling smartphone for two months in a row, according to Counterpoint Technology Market Research's Monthly Market Pulse report for October 2013. Cupertino holds three of the top four slots in the top 10, with Samsung's Galaxy S4 coming in at number three.
Top 10 smartphones in …

SC13
There's a lot of business-building freedom to be gained by escaping the tyranny of the Wall Street moneymen and turning your company into "the world's largest startup," a Dell exec tells The Reg.
When a company goes through a major transition as Dell has in its recent oh-so-public wrestling match with activist investor Carl …

Nvidia cofounder, president, and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang is a big, big fan of the Android operating system – a fact that he made abundantly clear when speaking with analysts and reporters after announcing his company's financial results for the third quarter of its 2014 fiscal year on Thursday.
"Android is the most disruptive …

Apple CEO Tim Cook has provided the clearest statements yet that in 2014 his company will launch products in tech categories it hasn't yet touched.
The iPhone supremo mentioned that time frame in answer to a question from an industry analyst about his earlier statements about new products, asked during a conference call after …

Apple has reported its financial results for the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2013: its numbers handily outperformed the projections published by the Wall Street moneymen, though net income slipped from the same period last year.
For the quarter, Apple's all-important earnings per share (EPS) came in at $8.26 on revenues of $37. …

Comment
As The Reg reported on Thursday, Microsoft communications chieftain Frank Shaw went off on Apple in a near-thousand word blog post defending his company's beleaguered Surface and Surface 2.
His fit of pique, while possibly a bit over-the-top, can be forgiven, considering that Apple CEO Tim Cook was unusually pugnacious during …

Peak Apple
Depending on which analyst group you prefer to believe, Apple's Mac sales in the US during the normally robust "back to school" quarter were either bad or very, very bad.
According to a report by Gartner and another by IDC, both released Wednesday, Apple was the only PC maker among the top five that suffered a decline in year-on …

Still licking its wounds from the beating it took in the mobile market, Intel is bound and determined to not get mugged when the next computing big boy comes tromping into town – the Internet of Things, or "IoT" to the digiscenti – and has introduced two chip lines and one interoperability effort to shore up its defenses.
"I'll …

Analysis
Two years ago today, Apple cofounder Steve Jobs died. Since then, much has changed at Apple, with the most visible difference being Tim Cook stepping out from under the shadow of his larger-than-life predecessor, shepherding Apple's product lines, expanding its distribution, reshuffling its executive team, mollifying investors …

Fresh from his flopped attempt to prevent Dell from going private, activist investor Carl Icahn has turned his attention towards Apple, advising CEO Tim Cook to up his stock-buyback plan to a cool $150bn.
Had a cordial dinner with Tim last night. We pushed hard for a 150 billion buyback. We decided to continue dialogue in …

BlackBerry – or, as the struggling Canadian smartphone manufacturer has been renamed by the chattering classes, "Beleaguered BlackBerry" – has signed a letter of intent to be taken private by a consortium led by Fairfax Financial Holdings of Toronto, Ontario.
Fairfax currently owns about 10 per cent of BlackBerry, and the …

Apple CEO Tim Cook has defended his company's strategy of sticking to the high end of the device market – read "expensive" – rather than competing at the low-cost, low-margin low end.
"There's always a large junk part of the market," Cook told Bloomberg Businessweek in a wide-ranging interview on Thursday. "We're not in the junk …

Bill Gates has regained his title as World's Richest Human, and has also been named the US's wealthiest person for the 20th consecutive year.
According to Forbes' annual survey of the 400 top members of the silk-stockinged class, Gates elbowed Mexican telecom magnate Carlos Slim off the summit of Mt. Moola, posting a net worth …

IDF13
Intel wants you to know that Moore's Law is not dead. And to prove it, CEO Brian Krzanich rolled out his company's next generation of process shrinkage at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.
"I'm here to introduce the first 14-nanometer PC," Krzanich said during his Tuesday keynote. The Ultrabook he displayed to his …

Nvidia's CEO says his company is working with Microsoft on a second-generation Surface RT, and that he believes it has a chance of success – even though the original Surface RT tablet was an utter flop – because it will include Microsoft Outlook.
"It is the killer app for Windows," Huang told Cnet. "Now we're going to bring it …

Apple – unlike its tech-industry compatriots Microsoft, Google, Intel, BlackBerry, and über-rival Samsung – surprised most Wall Street moneymen by turning in slightly better than expected numbers for its third fiscal quarter of 2013, reporting revenues of $35.3bn, net income of $6.9bn, and the all-important earnings per share ( …

AMD has entered phase two of its "restructure, accelerate, and ultimately transform" realignment project, says company president and CEO Rory Read, who sees brighter days ahead.
"With our restructuring complete, our focus in the second half of the year is on continuing to accelerate our business," Read told the analysts and …

A day after its competitor Intel posted financial results for its most recent quarter that came in slightly below analyst's estimates, AMD bucked that disappointing trend – but it's not quite out of the woods yet.
AMD reported its second quarter results on Thursday after markets closed, and reported a loss of $0.09 per share ( …

Every so often a press release passes by The Reg's gadget desk which just begs to be filed away and checked against future reality. Today's example: the market-watchers at Canalys ("Insight. Innovation. Impact.") predict that over five million smartwatches will ship worldwide next year.
"Smart watches will be the most important …

Microsoft has received two pieces of good news concerning its not-exactly-barn-burning Windows 8: there are now over 100,000 apps in the Windows 8 app store, and the installed base of Windows 8 has passed that of the late and unlamented Windows Vista.
What's more, that 100,000-app milestore was reached in just eight months – …

After a US judge refused Apple's request to add the Galaxy S 4 to the list of products for which Cupertino accuses Samsung of infringing upon its patents, Cook's crew is threatening to fire up yet another lawsuit against the Korean smartphone and tablet rival.
US Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal turned down Apple's petition to add …

Updated
Apple came out swinging at its detractors during its Worldwide Developers Conference keynote presentation in San Francisco, announcing a slew of new products including iOS 7, the next version of OS X, new MacBook Air notebooks, a "sneak peek" at the next-generation Mac Pro, and iTunes Radio - nee iRadio.
"Can't innovate anymore …

Global notebook sales may be in the crapper, but according to the chairman of the company manufacturing notebooks for Acer, Dell, Toshiba, HP, and others, the bluebird of sales-revenue happiness will sing again in the second half of this year.
On Thursday, Compal Electronics chairman Ray Chen told an investors conference that …

Updated
AMD released its financial results for the first quarter of its fiscal year 2013, which bracketed the Wall Street moneymen's predictions with revenues a tad higher than forecast and the all-important earnings per share (EPS) a tad lower.*
For the quarter, AMD's EPS number came in at negative $0.19 on revenues of $1.09bn, the …

One of the duties of a modern CEO is to offer as little detail as possible during investors' meetings, and Apple's headman Tim Cook has proved himself a Jedi master of snooze-inducing vapidity.
Speaking at Apple's annual investors meeting on Wednesday at the company's Cupertino headquarters, Cook piled bromide upon cliché upon …

Foster-child operating system webOS has been placed in yet another home – but not one in which it will be used for its original smartphone raison d'être.
LG Electronics will acquire the peripatetic OS from HP, which got its hands on webOS when it acquired Palm in April 2010 for a cool $1.2bn. Palm had used webOS for its ill- …

Hard drive sales will take a nose drive in 2013, according to a report by the market analysts at IHS.
"Facing a relentless onslaught from tablets, smartphones and solid state drives (SSD), global hard disk drive (HDD) market revenue in 2013 will decline by about 12 percent this year," IHS reported in an email on Monday …

Apple will discontinue shipping its long-neglected Mac Pro tower to the EU, EU candidates, and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) member states on March first, sources tell 9to5Mac.
According to that "Apple Intelligence" website, Cupertino has informed resellers that the Mac Pro is being retired from the aforementioned …

As these words are being typed, Apple's stock is taking a beating, down around 10 per cent from its $514.01 Wednesday close, in reaction to what Wall Street has clearly characterized as disappointing financial results for the first quarter of Apple's 2013 fiscal year.
May your humble Reg reporter take this opportunity to point …

Apple released its financial results for the first quarter of its 2013 fiscal year after the markets closed on Wednesday, and disappointing results immediately drove its stock price down by over 5 per cent.
Although Apple posted record quarterly revenue of $54.5bn, a quarterly profit of $13.1bn, and earnings-per-share (EPS) of $ …

AMD, slapped around by what CEO Rory Read and other corporate honchos like to refer to as "the challenging macro environment," looks to regain profitability in the second half of this year.
On a conference call with analysts and reporters after announcing its weak financial results for its fourth quarter of 2012, AMD CFO …